Friday, January 11, 2008

DEADPOOL #4 – November 1993

Deadpool and Weasel arrive at Tolliver’s monastery to claim his will.Kane appears and briefly fights Deadpool before they learn that Slayback is holding Vanessa.While Deadpool fights Slayback, Weasel and Kane discuss the Zero robot. Kane recognizes it from his time in the future, and they realize that Zero is the ultimate weapon in Tolliver’s will.Zero absorbs all energy signatures, making all other weapons obsolete.Zero nullifies Slayback, but not before he nearly kills Vanessa.Deadpool convinces Zero that even if he is a living weapon, he has also has the capacity to heal.Vanessa uses her copycat power to mimic Deadpool’s healing power and lives.Zero teleports away, as Deadpool realizes that he can do more than kill.

Continuity Notes

Zero was also a member of Styfe’s MLF, and appeared as recently as the X-Cutioner’s Song crossover.I’m not sure how ended up with Tolliver’s armory in Nepal, unless these robots are mass-produced in the future.Kane says that Zero is an “Adam unit…number zero in a series of thirteen”.

Slayback, whose real name is apparently Terraerton, served with Kane and Deadpool in the Weapon X project.

Creative Differences

Many of the final pages of this issue have been re-lettered.

ReviewAnd now, the Deadpool limited series wraps up.How many more X-Men 30th anniversary projects are left?I enjoyed the previous issues of this miniseries, but the final issue is disappointing.Deadpool finally confronts Slayback after months of build-up, but it’s impossible to really care since Slayback is never fleshed out as a character.Deadpool apparently killed him in the past and now he wants revenge, but there’s no more information given.I understand that he’s supposed to contrast Deadpool, who has some humanity left, but it doesn’t really work.For the first time in this series, the idea that Deadpool might be able to reform is raised.Considering the fact that this isn’t brought up until the very end of a four-issue limited series, it seems tacked on.And because Deadpool was more than willing to kill Vanessa a few months earlier in X-Force, it’s not very convincing.If Deadpool was really supposed to go through some important character arc in this series, it seems to have been treated as an afterthought.